III treatment of Native still No. 1 black mark

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Canada's treatment of Native people is still No. 1 on the list of human rights violations, says Canada's human rights watchdog.

In his annual report to the House of Commons Max Yalden pointed to last summer's violent standoff at Oka as "an extreme manifestation of a relationship between governments and aboriginal peoples that had been turning increasingly sour but that, at bottom, had never been what it ought to be."

In the report, released March 19, Yalden reiterated his call for a royal commission on aboriginal affairs and urged the government to form a new relationship with Natives.

Yalden, chief commissioner of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, said the backlog of unresolved specific land claims "is troubling and the system suffers from the fundamental weakness that government is judge and advocate all rolled into one."

The commission restated its call for the elimination of the department of Indian Affairs and the Indian Act struck in 1876 "when official condescension toward peoples who had been colonized was commonplace."

In November the commission made a similar statement in a scathing document on federal aboriginal policy.

It scolded the government for not giving Native issues the "priority they deserve."

The annual report is somewhat more sympathetic to government attempts at resolving Native difficulties. "To attribute the failure to deliver on claims resolution, self-government and other issues simply to a lack of government will would be unfair," said Yalden.

But he demanded the recognition of Indian self-government, saying to deny it is incompatible with domestic and international human rights obligations.

The report also touched on the meager gains made by Natives in employment equity and redressing wrongs to Native children forced to go to residential schools. Natives make up two per cent of the available labor pool but only 0.79 per cent are employed.

The report warned Canada's international human rights reputation is at stake if Native problems aren't solved.

Keith Penner, chairman of the 1983 parliamentary committee on Native self-government, said the rejection of aboriginal rights "has been with Canada a long time and we're not making a great deal of progress."

In a telephone interview from Thunder Bay, he said the government thinks it can deal with Natives through assimilation.

"The issues are so complicated the government prefers to fall back on the theory Native would be better off drifting into mainstream society and (it would prefer to) forget about claims, identity and special status."

Penner is skeptical about "what any one report can do." He said the government must deal with the "unresolved question of identifying aboriginal rights within the Constitution."

Section 37 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms recognizes aboriginal rights but does not define them.